The older adult population is growing. Many seniors will need more care in order to stay at home, and some will find it necessary to move into an institutional setting (National Institute on Aging, 2017). However, there is a growing trend for senior adults to want to remain at home and age in place. Occupational therapy practitioners whose work takes place in home settings have the opportunity to enable these individuals to preserve their independence. Recent advancements in smart home technology provide applications for this form of assistive technology in situations where an older person with a disability can remain in the home because of advances in (Mahoney et al., 2009; Mann et al., 1999; Tomita et al., 2007; van Hoof et al., 2011) automation or remote controlling that minimize the assistance needed from others. However, older adults may not have the base knowledge to set up these devices for themselves. Occupational therapy practitioners can serve as a bridge to enable older adults to use smart home technology in their homes by bringing together their expertise on home modification, assistive technology, and understanding of the person, environment, and activity/occupation (Maitra & Vasquez, 2011; Waite, 2015). This proposed program is designed to empower occupational therapy practitioners to be the bridge that enables older adults to use smart home technology. It is an evidence-based, theory-driven workshop that will provide instruction on different aspects of smart home technology, including guidelines for assessment, education, and implementation with older adult clients. Within a span of eight hours, instruction will include short lectures and videos, as well as opportunities for hands-on practice using case studies and actual work with smart home technology. Occupational therapy practitioners will become a knowledgeable part of the home care modification team; they will be prepared to apply a client-centered understanding of smart home technology and will have acquired the professional terminology to discuss smart home technology and its application for home modification with other non-health care professionals. Participants will also gain the tools to advocate for occupational therapy and smart home assistive technology to family members, caregivers, manufacturers and insurance providers.

Despite the increasing interest in blockchain as a possible solution to replace centralized IoT architectures, previous work failed to provide a direct role for the sensing devices, i.e., direct interaction with the blockchain without additional components. Moreover, few studies focus on permissionless blockchains, even if it is the most secure platform for developing blockchain-based applications. This thesis presents an architecture that considers constrained sensing devices as direct actors on a public blockchain network. A public blockchain network allows the seamless inclusion of several unknown actors, and smart contracts provide a platform to develop complex IoT applications. The research followed an iterative DSR approach; designing, building, and evaluating new IT artifacts using two case studies in the agricultural IoT domain. These cases fostered two exploratory studies that diverged from the main IoT domain; however, they also provide novel contributions to blockchain-based applications. Thus, the novel architecture tackles three problems of current blockchain-based IoT systems i) constrained sensing devices as direct actors on a blockchain system, ii) permissionless blockchain networks and iii) smart contracts as an IoT application platform. Furthermore, the exploratory analyses examine two challenges of blockchain-based applications i) user experience and monetary costs and ii) data sharing and decentralized storage.

Abstrakt   Nyckelord: Web of Things, Tillsammansodling, Ting, Entitet, Kultur   I undersökningen går vi igenom hur ting kan existera inom olika plan av vårt medvetande och även hur teknologin inom Web of Things (WoT*) kan agera som en entitet inom ett fenomen såsom tillsammansodling. De metoder som valts för att undersöka fenomenet är Brainstorm, Att flytta gränser och De sex tänkarmössorna. Dessa tre metoder är våra huvudmetoder som ansågs vara bästa valen för ändamålet medan alternativa metoder som Kanban*, funktionsanalys och ett agilt tänkande var för att kunna ge vår design det extra stöd som behövdes för att utvecklas. Metoderna för att kunna undersöka detta fenomen har utgjorts av olika delar från boken Design av informationsteknik av Jonas Löwgren och Erik Stolterman där vi utgått från att skapa en design med hjälp av de tre delarna vision, den operativa bilden och specifikationen (Löwgren & Stolterman, 2004). Dessa tre delar har använts i fem olika iterationer för att kunna använda metoderna i olika plan av designen. Resultatet påvisas genom att gå igenom designprocessens fem iterationer och med stöd från tidigare och aktuell forskning medan diskussionen presenteras genom att gå igenom de fyra hypoteser vi själva arbetade fram genom att undersöka tidigare och aktuella forskningstexter, de fyra hypoteser är som följer.   Hypotes ett: Fenomenet tillsammansodling i stadsmiljöer med kopplingar till Web of Things (WoT) skapar ett ting som består av både fysiska och psykiska relationer till de som befinner sig i det. Hypotes två: Tillsammansodlingar är till förmån för hållbarhet och sociala möten. Hypotes tre: WoT är inte bara ett fysiskt ting utan även psykiskt och kan beblanda sig med både människa och maskin på olika plan. Hypotes fyra: WoT som sociala medier kan få människan att vilja börja ta del av tillsammansodlingar i stadsmiljöer och påtrycka ändringar hos maskiner och hur människor arbetar tillsammans med dem. / Abstract   Keywords: Web of Things, Community gardening, Things, Entity, Culture   In this Bachelor thesis we go through how things can exist within different planes of our mind and further how technology within Web Of Things (WoT) can act as an entity within a phenomenon like Community gardening. The methods that was chosen for the survey of the phenomenon are Brainstorm, To move the border and The six thinkingcaps. This three methods are our main methods that was considered to be the best choice for our purpose while alternative methods like Kanban, Function analyses and an agile thinking was considered to be the extra structure our design needed to evolve. The methods to maintain this survey of the phenomenon has been consisted of different parts from the book Thoughtful interaction design written by Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman where we extracted three parts from it where the parts was vision, operative image and specification in order to create our design (Löwgren & Stolterman, 2004). This three parts has been integrated in five different iterations in order to use the methods of choosing in different parts of the design. The result is manifested from the design processes five iterations and the support from earlier and current researches while the discussion is presented through four hypotheses we manifested from the work from earlier and current research papers, the four hypotheses are as followed.   Hypothesis s one: The phenomenon Community gardening in urban environments with relations to Web of Things creates a thing that coexist within both the physical and psychological in the relationships of what is inside of the phenomenon. Hypothesis two: Community gardening is beneficial for sustainability and social encounters. Hypothesis three: Web Of Things is not just a physical thing but also a psychical and can exist in different planes of both mankind and machines. Hypothesis four: Web Of Things as social media can make the mankind want to integrate with Community gardening in urban environments and push changes in how humans and machine works together.

The Internet of things is a scenario where devices such as lighting, household appliances, sensors etc. are connected and communicate with each other via Internet. This puts a demand for a good infrastructure around these devices. One way to handle this is to use radio as a means of communication and let the devices forward each other's traffic in what is known as a mesh network. This thesis explores different radio standards that can be used to create a mesh network for sensors. Two different approaches to mesh networking using Bluetooth Low Energy was implemented and evaluated. One approach works by letting all devices broadcast every message they receive, a rather brute force approach. The other approach worked by letting the network find routes between all the nodes in the network and then establishes a connection between the nodes that want to communicate via intermediate nodes. It was found that the rebroadcast approach in idle mode used 3.36 mAh while the connection approach used 0.47 mAh for the same configuration. Another test was performed where the percentage of successfully delivered messages was measured. For the rebroadcast approach it was 75 % and for connection it was 58 %. Tweaking the connection network to not be able to adapt to changes increased the throughput to 77 %. During the testing numerous ways for improving performance were thought of but not implemented. The need for synchronizing the devices clocks and establishing protocol for when to send and receive became apparent when working with the rebroadcast network. In the connection network there were problems with that the routing maintenance led to unavailable units and reduced performance. / Sakernas internet, Internet of Things är ett scenario där elektriska apparater så som belysning, hushållsmaskiner, sensorer mm är anslutna och kommunicerar med varandra via internet. Men så många anslutna enheter ställer stora krav på infrastrukturen kring enheterna. Ett sätt att lösa problemen kring infrastruktur är att låta enheterna kommunicera via radio och låta dem vidarebefordra varandras datatrafik i en typ av nätverkstopologi som kallas för meshnätverk. Det här examensarbetet utforskar möjliga radiostandarder som kan användas för att skapa ett meshnätverk för just sensorer. Två typer av meshnätverk implementerades med Bluetooth Low Energy och deras styrkor och svagheter utvärderades. En av dessa gick ut på att enheterna i nätverket sände ut meddelanden som alla kunde ta och sedan att de som lyckades ta emot i sin tur sände meddelandena vidare. Det är en enkel metod som är lätt att implementera.Den andra metoden gick ut på att nätverket tog reda på sin konfiguration och vilken rutt som ska tas via andra enheter för att nå den man vill. När enheterna sen vill kommunicera så upprättar de en anslutning via enheterna längs rutten. Två saker som jämfördes mellan metoderna var strömförbrukning och andel lyckade sändningar. För samma nätverk så drog återsändnings nätverket 3.36 mA och anslutningsnätverket 0.47 mA. Antalet lyckade sändningar testades i ett annat scenario och där kom 75 % av meddelanden i återsändningsnätverket fram och motsvarande siffra för anslutningsnätverket var 58\%. Vidare testades det att stänga av utbytet av rutt information och sökningar efter nya enheter i anslutningsnätverket och då kom 77 % av meddelanden fram. I återsändningsnätverket insåg man att det fanns ett behov av att synkronisera klockorna i enheterna och etablera ett protokoll för hur när man ska sända och ta emot.I anslutningsnätverket så uppstod problem med att enheterna blev otillgängliga när de synkroniserade sin konfiguration vilket ledde till försämrad prestanda.

This study examines how an Information Technology consulting firm can act as an integrator for the Internet of Things. The aim is to contribute to a greater understanding of how the IoT-ecosystem looks and what roles an integrator can take in collaboration with partners. In order to create a deeper understanding of the topic a qualitative study was conducted with Softhouse's partners, customers, and themselves, in order to place them within the IoT-ecosystem. The study focused on examining how IoT solutions can be implemented in the forestry industry. The results show that Softhouse has a great potential to offer IoT solutions by a solid collaboration with partners. They should focus on becoming experts in data analysis through training and recruitment. Selection of partners for different projects depends on its size, complexity and type. Through analysis and by using the business model Business Model Canvas it is possible to see which partners are most suitable for which type of project. This was applied to two such cases with clients in the forest industry; Södra Skog and APEA Mobile Security Solutions.

Vår grundläggande avsikt med studien är att få en större förståelse kring gestaltningen av genus på populärkultur. Det kommer vi att uppnå̊ med att analysera stereotypa representationer av kvinnor och män i tv-serien Stranger things. Vårt övergripande mål med studien är att tydliggöra hur olika normer och sociala strukturer samspelar i media. Vårt syfte med studien är att undersöka om porträtteringen är normbrytande eller om den förstärker rådande genusnormer. Uppsatsens teoretiska ramverk består av hegemoni som tillåter oss att undersöka genus och klass. De teoretiska begrepp som vi använder oss av är bland annat hegemonisk maskulinitet, normkritik och genus. Som metod har vi använt oss av gestaltningsteorin, och vi har vi tagit fram fyra återkommande ramar samt analyserat dem med hermeneutiska verktyg. Vi vill undersöka om det är möjligt att Stranger things är lika genusneutral som den framställts på olika medier eller om serien upprätthåller existerande genusstereotyper och normer. Vad som gör vår studie intressant och olik tidigare undersökningar som tittat på genusroller i media är att vi anser att Stranger things inte skildrar eller förstärker genusstereotyper vid första anblick. Det här gjorde oss intresserade att kritiskt analysera seriens innehåll för att se om det är möjligt för en serie som Stranger things att vara fri från genusstereotyper och normer. Studien avslutas med en diskussion kring porträtteringen av män och kvinnor i serien där vi fastställer att Stranger things påvisar många genusstereotypa karaktärer. Utifrån våra fyra ramar som är stereotyper, sexualisering, normbrytning och hegemonisk maskulinitet konstaterar vi att seriens karaktärer inte är så nyskapande som vi tidigare trodde.

Pervasive Service Discovery (SD) in Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) is expected to play a major role in realising the Internet of Things (IoT) vision. Such a vision aims to expand the current Internet to interconnect billions of miniature smart objects that sense and act on our surroundings in a way that will revolutionise the future. The pervasiveness and heterogeneity of such low-power devices requires robust, automatic, interoperable and scalable deployment and operability solutions. At the same time, the limitations of such constrained devices impose strict challenges regarding complexity, energy consumption, time-efficiency and mobility. This research contributes new lightweight solutions to facilitate automatic deployment and operability of LLNs. It mainly tackles the aforementioned challenges through the proposition of novel component-based, automatic and efficient SD solutions that ensure extensibility and adaptability to various LLN environments. Building upon such architecture, a first fully-distributed, hybrid pushpull SD solution dubbed EADP (Extensible Adaptable Discovery Protocol) is proposed based on the well-known Trickle algorithm. Motivated by EADPs’ achievements, new methods to optimise Trickle are introduced. Such methods allow Trickle to encompass a wide range of algorithms and extend its usage to new application domains. One of the new applications is concretized in the TrickleSD protocol aiming to build automatic, reliable, scalable, and time-efficient SD. To optimise the energy efficiency of TrickleSD, two mechanisms improving broadcast communication in LLNs are proposed. Finally, interoperable standards-based SD in the IoT is demonstrated, and methods combining zero-configuration operations with infrastructure-based solutions are proposed. Experimental evaluations of the above contributions reveal that it is possible to achieve automatic, cost-effective, time-efficient, lightweight, and interoperable SD in LLNs. These achievements open novel perspectives for zero-configuration capabilities in the IoT and promise to bring the ‘things’ to all people everywhere.

Since the sequential inference framework determines the number of total samples in real-time based on the history data, it yields quicker decision compared to its fixed-sample-size counterpart, provided the appropriate early termination rule. This advantage is particularly appealing in the system where data is acquired in sequence, and both the decision accuracy and latency are of primary interests. Meanwhile, the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has created all types of connected devices, which can potentially enhance the inference performance by providing information diversity. For instance, smart home network deploys multiple sensors to perform the climate control, security surveillance, and personal assistance. Therefore, it has become highly desirable to pursue the solutions that can efficiently integrate the classic sequential inference methodologies into the networked multi-agent systems. In brief, this thesis investigates the sequential hypothesis testing problem in multi-agent networks, aiming to overcome the constraints of communication bandwidth, energy capacity, and network topology so that the networked system can perform sequential test cooperatively to its full potential. The multi-agent networks are generally categorized into two main types. The first one features a hierarchical structure, where the agents transmit messages based on their observations to a fusion center that performs the data fusion and sequential inference on behalf of the network. One such example is the network formed by wearable devices connected with a smartphone. The central challenges in the hierarchical network arise from the instantaneous transmission of the distributed data to the fusion center, which is constrained by the battery capacity and the communication bandwidth in practice. Therefore, the first part of this thesis is dedicated to address these two constraints for the hierarchical network. In specific, aiming to preserve the agent energy, Chapter 2 devises the optimal sequential test that selects the "most informative" agent online at each sampling step while leaving others in idle status. To overcome the communication bottleneck, Chapter 3 proposes a scheme that allows distributed agents to send only one-bit messages asynchronously to the fusion center without compromising the performance. In contrast, the second type of networks does not assume the presence of a fusion center, and each agent performs the sequential test based on its own samples together with the messages shared by its neighbours. The communication links can be represented by an undirected graph. A variety of applications conform to such a distributed structure, for instance, the social networks that connect individuals through online friendship and the vehicular network formed by connected cars. However, the distributed network is prone to sub-optimal performance since each agent can only access the information from its local neighborhood. Hence the second part of this thesis mainly focuses on optimizing the distributed performance through local message exchanges. In Chapter 4, we put forward a distributed sequential test based on consensus algorithm, where agents exchange and aggregate real-valued local statistics with neighbours at every sampling step. In order to further lower the communication overhead, Chapter 5 develops a distributed sequential test that only requires the exchange of quantized messages (i.e., integers) between agents. The cluster-based network, which is a hybrid of the hierarchical and distributed networks, is also investigated in Chapter 5.

<p>In V.S. Naipaul’s novel <em>A House for Mr. Biswas </em>furniture and possessions are consistently present and their path can be clearly traced, but they are rarely brought to the fore as the central image in the unfolding events of the novel. To borrow a metaphor from movies: the furniture is not the leading actor; the house is. The furniture has a supporting role in the story. This essay explores how the furniture and other possessions in <em>A House for Mr. Biswas </em>underline and illustrate various aspects and themes of the novel from the perspective of what the things in themselves project, what their role is and what they say about the character of Mr. Biswas and his life’s trajectory in the overall colonial context.</p>

In V.S. Naipaul’s novel A House for Mr. Biswas furniture and possessions are consistently present and their path can be clearly traced, but they are rarely brought to the fore as the central image in the unfolding events of the novel. To borrow a metaphor from movies: the furniture is not the leading actor; the house is. The furniture has a supporting role in the story. This essay explores how the furniture and other possessions in A House for Mr. Biswas underline and illustrate various aspects and themes of the novel from the perspective of what the things in themselves project, what their role is and what they say about the character of Mr. Biswas and his life’s trajectory in the overall colonial context.